Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Zlatan's escape trumps Mascherano's whingeing

Here is my expert analysis of the Mascherano to Liverpool "I know the lies about Hodgson but I'm not telling because I'm in such a good mood" story: Masch is kind of a dick. Certainly the accompanying photo in the Guardian doesn't help, as if the photographer advised him to "look as smug as you possibly can, then try and look twice as smug as that." Then there's that other picture that makes him look like a newly-toilet trained three year-old.

Masch is a dick, but he's done nothing wrong, really. What's wrong is that Barcelona has become the spiritual home of about all the best (albeit mostly Spanish-speaking) players in Europe. They all want to play there, and apparently Barcelona is happy as sin to buy them up. Because I am not the sort of tactical mind to make up a couple of starting elevens with all of Barca's acquisitions switching between La Liga and the Champions League and the Copa del Rey, I can't prove it, but I'm not convinced all the pieces fit.

Anyway, the whole Zlatan affair means Barca fans don't have a pot to piss in when it comes to talking about Roy Hodgson selfishly holding back Mascherano from fulfilling his lifelong ambition to play in the best club in Europe for many millions of Euros (by the way, the fact Guardiola hardly ever spoke with, talked to, dealt with Ibra isn't at all abnormal in top flight professional football. Some of the pros I've spoken with admit they barely speak with the managers at all. The gaffers run front office and let the trainers take care of shit during the week. This is also part of the reason I have long considered football managers on par with symphony orchestra conductors—they might be the highest paid musical placebos on the face of the earth). As the transfer window closes, we might end up remembering this is the year that Barca lost its spiritual edge over Madrid. And even worse, as eight of Real's players "have the crack" as the Google translated Marca puts it, the title race could be decided Globetrotters-style by December.

European football, bloody hell.

Post main article bullet point

Dr. Lowe is already on to me. He's apparently chuffed he has a rival, which is sort of like the 1960 Soviet Union declaring it's chuffed little Timmy from Ancaster ON has finally got that BB-gun he always wanted. Still, I will not be intimidated!

About AMSL

While this blog started in December 2007 as a mish-mash on everything from North American Football Fans (NAFFs) to the history of soccer in Toronto, it has recently morphed into a football blog about football blogs, and soccer media in general, with a focus on North America and Canada in particular. It was included in the middle of the Guardian's (arbitrary) list of 100 football blogs to look for in 2011, after James Dart clearly ran out of ideas.

"It turned you into a member of a new community, all brothers together for an hour and a half, for not only had you escaped the clanking machinery of this lesser life, from work, from wages, rent, doles, sick pay, insurance cards, nagging wives, ailing children, bad bosses, idle workmen, but you had escaped with most of your mates and your neighbours, with half the town, cheering together, thumping one another on the shoulders, swapping judgments like Lords of the Earth, having pushed your way through a turnstile into another and altogether more splendid life." J. B. Priestley

About

Richard Whittall writes on football from his hovel in Toronto, Canada. In addition to this site, he also writes the Canadian Soccer history blog, The Spirit of Forsyth. He is a regular contributor the Score's Footy Blog, Canadian Soccer News, and Brian Phillip's unsurpassed Run of Play. His writing has appeared in Toronto Life and the Globe and Mail, and he was a contributor for Brooks Peck's Yahoo! blog Dirty Tackle for the 2010 World Cup. He appeared once on Football Weekly as villasupportgroup.